The Secret Lives of Kitchen Spices

There’s a warmonger, a cure-all, and a former currency in your cabinet. Do you know which is which?

CINNAMON STORKS

In ancient times, the origins of cinnamon were a mystery to the Western world, and Arab merchants wanted to keep it that way. To hike up the price, they spun an elaborate tale, claiming that giant birds collected cinnamon sticks from far-off lands and used them to build nests on cliffs. To get the precious sticks, traders laid out massive chunks of ox meat, which the birds grabbed and carried to their nests. But because the slabs were so large, the nests would collapse, allowing the clever merchants to collect their prize.

Europeans bought this story until the late 1400s when the Portuguese found the real source of cinnamon—lush groves in Sri Lanka. Once they’d figured it out, the Portuguese struck a deal with the Sri Lankans to monopolize the trade and built a fort there to protect their assets. They were displaced by the Dutch in 1658, who were subsequently displaced by the Brits in 1796. But by then, the trees had been exported worldwide, so there was little need to fight for a cinnamon fix.

THE POWER OF CUBEB COMPELS YOU

With notes of allspice and clove, cubeb comes from a plant that’s a close relative to black pepper, and it tastes somewhat similar. So it’s no surprise that cubeb was used as a cheap stand-in for its far more expensive cousin during the Middle Ages in Europe and through the 1800s in the U.S. Today, cubeb is rarely found outside Indonesian cuisine, but it’s a key ingredient in a ritual far more interesting than dinner: exorcisms.

In his 17th-century book Demoniality, Italian priest Ludovico Maria Sinistrari recalls that cubeb did wonders for a “young maiden of noble family, who was tempted by an Incubus that appeared to her both by day and by night.” He tossed a few kernels of cubeb into her bedroom, and “the Incubus came, but never dared enter.”

THE GREAT TEXAS SALT FIGHT

(Image credit: Phreakster 1998)

OK, we know it’s not technically a spice, but bear with us—this is good! First extracted from briny spring water in Romania in 6050 BCE, salt’s use as a food preservative allowed the local population to flourish. On the other hand, salt has also sparked more than its fair share of wars and revolutions, even on American soil. When Judge Charles Howard formed a “Salt Ring” in 1877 to gain control of the dry salt lakes near the base of the Guadalupe Mountains, the Mexican-Americans who’d been living there and collecting salt for free decided they didn’t want bland food imposed on them. So they rioted.

Twenty Texas Rangers swaggered in to clean up the mess, but they were no match for the rebels, who disarmed and ousted the Rangers, killing Howard in the process. At that point, the settlers were allowed to keep their salt, but the flats soon fell into disuse after railroads started bringing in cheaper salt from Kansas in 1881. Nonetheless, the Rangers are still bitter about the experience—it was the only time in history they were forced to surrender.

DEATH BY (FAKE) SAFFRON

(Image credit: Guillaume Paumier, CC-BY)

The saffron you sprinkle on your paella is the most expensive spice in the world, fetching as much as $1,000 per pound. And for good reason: Saffron comes from the stigma of a sterile flower that no longer exists in the wild. The saffron we eat is the result of 3,000 years of breeding that began in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Stranger still, a pound of saffron requires 50,000–75,000 flowers—enough to cover a football field—and would take days to pick.

Throughout history, saffron has been lauded as a cure-all. In the fourth century BCE, Alexander the Great took saffron baths to soothe his battle wounds. During the 14th century CE it was a go-to treatment for outbreaks. Even today, recent studies show that saffron can help treat Alzheimer’s, breast cancer, depression, and an array of other ailments. No wonder counterfeiting has been such a problem over the years. In the 1300s, Germany enacted the Safranschou code, which made saffron tampering punishable by death. One convicted tamperer was roasted over a fire of his flavorless saffron.

24-KARAT PEPPER

(Image credit: Rainer Zenz)

Grow a Piper nigrum shrub, pick its red berries, boil them until they turn black, dry them in the sun, and you’ve got pepper—the most popular spice in history! Long before shakerfuls hit every diner in America, pepper originated in the mountains of India, where it was referred to as “black gold.” This was a misnomer—pepper was worth more than its weight in gold, and individual peppercorns were even accepted as currency at the time, and it wasn’t just India.

In Dutch, the term “pepper expensive” is used to describe something extremely pricey, which explains why the country waged war against the Portuguese in the 1590s to get a piece of the trade. The spice remained costly for centuries. Even in 19th-century England, shady suppliers would dilute pepper, mixing in charcoal or floor sweepings to stretch its street value. Since then, however, pepper’s price has plummeted as it became more widely grown. As for the stuff you’re sprinkling on your scrambled eggs, don’t worry—it’s pure.

ENGLAND’S NUTMEG SWINDLE

(Image credit: W.A. Djatmiko)

Nutmeg wasn’t just valued for its sweet, nutty taste—Europeans once wore bags of it around their necks to ward off the Black Plague. (It’s possible it worked, since the spice repels fleas!) For centuries, the Banda islands of Indonesia were the only place nutmeg trees grew—a perfect opportunity for a monopoly, which the Dutch snapped up in the 1600s. After occupying the islands, the Dutch started a brisk business, making sure to douse any nutmegs they sold in lime so they couldn’t grow elsewhere.

The plan would have been airtight if it weren’t for the tiny Banda island Run, which continued trading with the English. Although Holland and England had signed a peace treaty in 1619, Holland decided to invade Run and took over the island in 1666. A year later, Holland appeased the British by trading the exotic island of Manhattan for Run. As historian Giles Milton quipped, although the war “robbed England of her nutmeg, it gave her the biggest of apples.”

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The article above, written by Judy Dutton, is reprinted with permission from the October 2012 issue of mental_floss magazine. Get a subscription to mental_floss and never miss an issue!